Metapolitics

To present another dichotomy between two different approaches, as was signaled (artificially) among being and event in an earlier post, I propose in the following to differentiate, following Badiou, among political philosophy and metapolitics. The tradition of political philosophy, on the one hand, designates the formal science of political judgment. For Badiou, it is the study of what constitutes the essence of politics. This is typically pursued as a thought experiment, comparing the advantages and disadvantages of various abstract regimes of power or state forms, such as democracy, tyranny, monarchy, oligarchy, aristocracy, and so on.

Insofar as political philosophy forms clear and distinct ideas about the timeless nature of politics, according to Bruno Bosteels in Badiou and Politics, it “tends to obscure, displace, or supplant instances of ‘real politics’” (2011: 19). This lofty mode of politics, according to Badiou, contemplates the political apart from specific political acts. The position of the political philosopher is as “an outside observer or belated spectator” (ibid.: 19). All of this suggests that really existing instances of political practice will typically be judged and criticized from the perspective of the fundamental roots of politics. Concrete forms of emancipatory politics, in other words, will be dismissed as not sufficiently approximating the founding ideals of politics.

Surprisingly, this verdict applies even, and especially, to Marx. Bosteels reminds us that, for Marx, all existing forms of politics, even revolutionary ones, fall short of true revolutionary politics: “all…political emancipation can always be found wanting and subjected to criticism…from the vantage point of a true, properly human emancipation yet to come” (ibid.: 23). In short, by setting up transcendental principles above and beyond the muddy realm of politics, the falseness of existing forms of political sequences can always be criticized.

Badiou on the other hand identifies a different political process worthy of the name, what he refers to as metapolitics. Rather than reducing the political to an established idea, Badiou conceives of the political as an unfolding process in the middle of the event. As opposed to the political philosopher who evaluates a situation in the way of an onlooker, the metapolitical orientation puts the philosopher under specific political conditions. This type of analysis, otherwise stated, is thought from within a mode of doing politics. Or, in the words of Bosteels, “philosophy should come to seize politics from within, without referring the process to any explanatory data that would serve as its external guarantee” (ibid.: 26). And inasmuch as this orientation puts politics in the events themselves instead of raising itself up to the heights of speculative reason, metapolitics is based on a broad materialism.

This form of political process is intended to reflect the conviction of Badiou that ‘the masses think’ or, more accurately, that ‘the masses think justly’. Here is how Bosteels describes it: “an event in politics is one that puts people to think and, moreover, one that produces collective forms of thought that are essentially just” (ibid.: 18). Politics, as described here, is a way of thinking. The task of the philosopher, in this regard, is “to investigate which conceptual tools it should develop in order to be able to register in its midst the consequences of a political event”, rather than to judge which typical image of politics ought to be put into practice (ibid.: 20). Philosophy, as a result, produces no political truths of its own. The possibility of political philosophy depends instead on conditions that take place “behind the philosopher’s back” (ibid.: 24). Only as a consequence of unpredictable events outside of itself is philosophy animated at all.

It is important to note for purposes related to diasporic thought that the subject does not preexist the political act. Rather the subject is induced by an active form of militant practice. In the same way that philosophy emerges within the political sequence and not apart from it, the subject is similarly “a fragment of the sustained inquiry into the consequences of an event for a possible universal truth” (ibid.: 25).

Succeeding posts will expand on this view but for now it may help to add that indigenous movements or protests in the interior are not merely carving out an autonomous space in the normal state of affairs in which to add their own group identity among others. The presupposition that various groups have unified, pre-packaged identities notwithstanding, this political bent ignores, for Badiou, that “a militant subject emerges only when the particular terms of the various memberships that define society are put down and abolished in favor of a generic concept of truth as universally the same for all” (ibid.: 30). Any politics worthy of its name “has nothing to do with respect for difference” but refigures the social space itself, “one possible name of which continues to be communism” (ibid.: 31).